Opinion | The Abortion Pill Case Is a Disaster for Republicans

We are six months from the midterm elections, and abortion is now, once again, in the spotlight. “Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is arguing a proper medical oversight needs to be implemented when it comes to dispensing abortion pills.” “The biggest attack on abortion since the end of Roe.” “The Supreme Court temporarily restored the ability to receive the widely used abortion drug mifepristone by mail.” “This means access is restored, at least for now.” The Supreme Court is about to make an enormous decision on abortion. Banning these pills is a no-win situation. It’s a no-win situation for Republicans, who are trying to win on an issue that is wildly unpopular. Choice is popular. It’s a no-win situation for people who are of reproductive age, because these drugs are used in all sorts of gynecological treatments. And it’s a no-win situation for the American people, because it’s taking away another freedom and it’s greatly restricting what is sold or how we get medication in this country. The Supreme Court will now rule on abortion pills. There are a couple of things that can happen here. The first choice is that they overturn the Louisiana decision and they say they’re not going to rule on it. If it happens, it will be bad for Trump because it will mean that anti-choice Republicans will be mad. That’s the first option. It’s probably the best for women who need medical care. There’s a second option, which is that this Supreme Court says you have to go back to making it so that people have to go in person to get abortion pills. I think this Supreme Court will do this, because it will make it harder for women to get abortions. It will make it harder for women to get the drug. But there’s a precedent for it. That said, when it was that people had to go in person to get abortion pills, Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land. If the Supreme Court goes back to prepandemic prescribing of abortion pills, it will affect women in red states the most. They will need to find doctors in their state that will prescribe abortion pills. And if you’re in a state where abortion is illegal, you’re not going to be able to find doctors to prescribe you, because they don’t want to lose their licenses by doing something illegal. The third choice is that this Supreme Court, which is very ideological and did overturn Roe v. Wade, does, in fact, make these pills illegal. What that will mean is that this Supreme Court says that even if a drug has been approved by the F.D.A. for decades and decades, that it can still be pulled from the market because, ideologically, this government doesn’t like what it does. What that does is open the door to an America where certain drugs can’t be sold because our courts don’t believe in what they do. It’s, I think, the most unlikely option, but it’s certainly something that this Supreme Court is capable of doing. And I could see them doing it. “That’s going to be, a problem trying to get a doctor who will do it.” Before 1973, America made it very hard to get abortions. “There should be complete repeal of all abortion laws, so that the individual woman can make her own decision in consultation with her doctor.” Women still had abortions. They just died from them. Making abortions illegal does not prevent people from having abortions. It just prevents people from having safe abortions. If this Supreme Court makes abortion pills illegal, we are about to see a lot of the kind of carnage we saw pre-1973. And that is, to me, very scary.